The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography. C. S. Lewis
Чтение книги онлайн.
Читать онлайн книгу The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography - C. S. Lewis страница 206
![The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography - C. S. Lewis The Complete Works: Fantasy & Sci-Fi Novels, Religious Studies, Poetry & Autobiography - C. S. Lewis](/cover_pre889094.jpg)
“In the name of Hell, where’s all them beasts coming from?” he said.
“They are the liberated prisoners from Belbury,” said the Director. “She comes more near the Earth than she was wont to—to make Earth sane. Perelandra is all about us and Man is no longer isolated. We are now as we ought to be—between the angels who are our elder brothers and the beasts who are our jesters, servants, and playfellows.”
Whatever MacPhee was attempting to say in reply was drowned by an ear-splitting noise from beyond the window.
“Elephants! Two of them,” said Jane weakly. “Oh, the celery! And the rose beds!”
“By your leave, Mr. Director,” said MacPhee sternly, “I’ll just draw these curtains. You seem to forget there are ladies present.”
“No,” said Grace Ironwood in a voice as strong as his, “there will be nothing unfit for anyone to see. Draw them wider. How light it is! Brighter than moonlight: almost brighter than day. A great dome of light stands over the whole garden. Look! The elephants are dancing. How high they lift their feet. And they go round and round. And oh, look!—how they lift their trunks. And how ceremonial they are. It is like a minuet of giants. They are not like the other animals. They are a sort of good daemons.”
“They are moving away,” said Camilla.
“They will be as private as human lovers,” said the Director. “They are not common beasts.”
“I think,” said MacPhee, “I’ll away down to my office and cast some accounts. I’d feel easier in my mind if I were inside and the door locked before any crocodiles or kangaroos start courting in the middle of all my files. There’d better be one man about the place keep his head this night, for the rest of you are clean daft. Good night, ladies.”
“Good-bye, MacPhee,” said Ransom.
“No, no,” said MacPhee, standing well back but extending his hand. “You’ll speak none of your blessings over me. If ever I take to religion, it won’t be your kind. My uncle was Moderator of the General Assembly. But there’s my hand. What you and I have seen together . . . but no matter for that. And I’ll say this, Dr. Ransom, that with all your faults (and there’s no man alive knows them better than myself) you are the best man, taking you by and large, that ever I knew or heard of. You are . . . you and I . . . but there are the ladies crying. I don’t rightly know what I was going to say. I’m away this minute. Why would a man want to lengthen it? God bless you, Dr. Ransom. Ladies, I’ll wish you a good night.”
“Open all the windows,” said Ransom. “The vessel in which I must ride is now almost within the air of this World.”
“It is growing brighter every minute,” said Denniston.
“Can we be with you to the very end?” said Jane.
“Child,” said the Director, “you should not stay till then.”
“Why, sir?”
“You are waited for.”
“Me, sir?”
“Yes. Your husband is waiting for you in the lodge. It was your own marriage chamber that you prepared. Should you not go to him?”
“Must I go now?”
“If you leave the decision with me, it is now that I would send you.”
“Then I will go, sir. But—but—am I a bear or a hedgehog?”
“More. But not less. Go in obedience and you will find love. You will have no more dreams. Have children instead. Urendi Maleldil.”
VII
Long before he reached St. Anne’s, Mark had come to realise that either he himself or else the world about him was in a very strange condition. The journey took him longer than he expected, but that was perhaps fully accounted for by one or two mistakes that he made. Much harder to explain was the horror of light to the west, over Edgestow, and the throbbings and bouncings of the earth. Then came the sudden warmth and the torrents of melted snow rolling down the hillside. Everything became a mist: and then, as the lights in the west vanished, this mist grew softly luminous in a different place—above him, as though the light rested on St. Anne’s. And all the time he had the curious impression that things of very diverse shapes and sizes were slipping past him in the haze—animals, he thought. Perhaps it was all a dream; or perhaps it was the end of the world: or perhaps he was dead. But in spite of all perplexities, he was conscious of extreme well-being. His mind was ill at ease, but as for his body—health and youth and pleasure and longing seemed to be blowing towards him from the cloudy light upon the hill. He never doubted that he must keep on.
His mind was not at ease. He knew that he was going to meet Jane, and something was beginning to happen to him which ought to have happened to him far earlier. That same laboratory outlook upon love which had forestalled in Jane the humility of a wife, had equally forestalled in him, during what passed for courtship, the humility of a lover. Or if there had ever arisen in him at some wiser moment the sense of “Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear,” he had put it away from him. False theories, at once prosaic and fanciful, had made it seem to him a mood frowsty, unrealistic, and outmoded. Now, belated, after all favours had been conceded, the unexpected misgiving was coming over him. He tried to shake it off. They were married, weren’t they? And they were sensible, modern people? What could be more natural, more ordinary?
But then certain moments of unforgettable failure in their short married life rose in his imagination. He had thought often enough of what he called Jane’s “moods.” This time at last he thought of his own clumsy importunity. And the thought would not go away. Inch by inch all the lout and clown and clod-hopper in him was revealed to his own reluctant inspection; the coarse, male boor with horny hands and hobnailed shoes and beefsteak jaw, not rushing in—for that can be carried off—but blundering, sauntering, stumping in where great lovers, knights and poets, would have feared to tread. An image of Jane’s skin, so smooth, so white (or so he now imagined it) that a child’s kiss might make a mark on it, floated before him. How had he dared? Her driven snow, her music, her sacrosanctity, the very style of all her movements . . . how had he dared? And dared, too, with no sense of daring, nonchalantly, in careless stupidity! The very thoughts that crossed her face from moment to moment, all of them beyond his reach, made (had he but had the wit to see it) a hedge about her which such as he should never have had the temerity to pass. Yes, yes—of course it was she who had allowed him to pass it: perhaps in luckless, misunderstanding pity. And he had taken blackguardly advantage of that noble error in her judgement; had behaved as if he were native to that fenced garden and even its natural possessor.
All this, which should have been uneasy joy, was torment to him, for it came too late. He was discovering the hedge after he had plucked the rose, and not only plucked it but torn it all to pieces and crumpled it with hot, thumb-like, greedy fingers. How had he dared? And who that understood could forgive him? He knew now what he must look like in the eyes of her friends and equals. Seeing that picture, he grew hot to the forehead, alone there in the mist.
The word Lady had made no part of his vocabulary save as a pure form, or else in mockery. He had laughed too soon.
Well, he would release her. She would be glad to be rid of him. Rightly glad. It would